it’s an LP – Halloween edition

Hello! Hello!

Sorry for the long absence, it has been a LONG time, I know, but I couldn’t let Halloween pass with all the seasonal stitching I’ve been doing and not show you something! 😊 👻

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First off let me start by telling you this is another of those big TAC catching-up posts, and because it will cover letters L through P of the alphabet, you get the title. 😉

I actually had to check when I last wrote an actual post for the blog, and it was back in June.. eek!! scary, uh? It was a draft I never got around to publish and at that time I had just finished the last frame of Story Time Sampler and next in line was the Mysterious Hallowe’en Town Club, again by The Frosted Pumpkin Stitchery gals Amanda & Ashleigh (see? found a perfect spot for it now anyway 😉).

Speaking of the Story Time Club for a moment, The Great Gatsby (you’ll see the relevance later on) was one of my favourite frames to work on, perhaps because it’s such a bittersweet, sad story where everything looks so good from the outside but when you look closely at the characters you start seeing the cracks, the tears, the unhappiness, .. I don’t know, but I find it odd that people today look at this novel as the golden age of anything good and prosperous – if Gatsby tells you anything, it’s precisely the opposite, but let’s not start a bookclub debate now (or should we? it doesn’t sound like a terrible idea come to think of it! 😜)

Going back to the needlework piece in question, I don’t think you’ve seen a proper Hallowe’en Town update, so here are part 1 and 2 all stitched up:

I took some liberty with the colour palette and added a few Speciality Stitches here and there; in some cases I chose silks and used the variegation of Nina’s Threads as smart stitchers do making the most of those beautiful shades. To nobody’s surprise I’m stitching 1 over 2 on 40ct. hand dyed linen. 🤓

— part of draft I didn’t have the heart to delete, take it as a sort of diary entry from a few months ago —

 As it happens, I have to exercise all the self-control I dispose of today, because just this morning those charts that mysteriously disappeared a few weeks ago decided to show up – just like that! 😀 👻 🎉 So now in theory I would have all I need to start Patches of Life by L’Atelier Perdu.. 😬 The truth is, if I start a new project today I’ll find myself with a million things on the way again, a bedlam of threads, key rings, working copies, notes, dowels, baskets, and all that goes with it and I just can’t handle it at the moment.

Not to mention, I do have two small starts planned for later on this month, when the new Pumpkin club starts, it’s called Summer Beach Day and since the theme was announced I knew I had the perfect fabric for it in my stash so how could I say no to this one?! 😜 plus it came with all sorts of coordinated accessories and you know how very little restraint I have when it comes to coordinating needlework bits.. 😉

Fast forwarding a few days and I had The Mysterious Hallowe’en Town Club all stitched up – scary how much I can finish off when I pick up projects I left 3/4 of the way done..! 😀  This is part of a series of designs showing village scenes, and because they’re all similar in size I decided I’ll finish them all as matching pillows:

Here is a close up of those insanely cute pumpkins:

— end of draft —

entry for letter L – and easy one would be lampione, the lamppost you see on the far right of the design. Some other great ones from this piece would be: corvi (crows), spaventapasseri (scarecrow), zucche (pumpkins), gufi (owls) and pipistrelli (bats).

As you noticed, in Italian crow is not part of the word for scarecrow, apparently the main bird to keep away from fields here is the common sparrow (passero), though the feminine for passero (passera) is another word for.. did you hear that Trump bus chat? yeah, it’s another word for that (!) – so in a way you could say Trump is a giant spaventapassere, but I really shouldn’t start with Trump jokes or this post will never see its end!!

Next in line was another FPS Club, the one I hold dearest, Once Upon A Time Sampler ❤️❤️❤️❤️

Needless to say I did my own thing to this one, modifying each block, adding this and that, changing colours, charting special bits especially for this piece, I even added my own initial to my birth month block because it made so much sense – C, Cinderella! 😀

Sadly I have to upload all the shots about this project in the poorest quality, but I promise you, it’s the prettiest in the lot – I cannot wait to have it up and framed, just look at those colours! 😃 instant cheering up! 😆

entry for letter M – magnete (magnet) although another word for it is calamita (accent goes on the i)- not to be confused with calamità (calamity), accents makes all the difference! – and here are some kawaii magneti 😉

And finally here we are, the Halloween extravaganza as I like to call it. 😉 All month I’ve been working on Halloween pieces to turn into 6 sided ornaments: I designed backsides and sides for each of them, I took the chance and gave the same treatment to that Gatsby extra frame for STS I mentioned earlier, and I would have finished it all if I hadn’t succumbed to the call of crochet..! This happened a few weeks ago when I saw these unbelievable patterns by lalylala, they are crocheted kawaii cuteness also known as amigurumi, which I had never tried before (in all honesty I wouldn’t say I was much of a crocheter either before giving these a go) but the instructions looked so clear, and despite all my plans I was having a hard time keeping up my stitching mojo anyway so I closed my eyes, swiped the card, ordered yarns and for the first time in my life BLACK GLASS EYES..! You would be surprised to hear how elusive can 5mm eyes be, in fact if you decide to source materials for these guys and want to shop within EU just drop me a line, I came across some incredibly helpful shops during this quest. 😀

At this point I should show you Summer Beach Day I mentioned in my “diary” paragraph and all the Halloween stitching I’ve been working on this month, but I’ve decided to save those for Jo’s Halloween Blog Hop post that is coming up shortly anyway, in the meantime here is a kawaii Frank and start to a second one:

The one standing is still missing arms and bolts, but I want to make those in “batches” and attach them at the same time, so a few more days needed — they might be ready for Jo’s post, who knows! 😊 Also in this series, a one-eyed zombie with exposed brain aptly named Brian and Diego, a Dia de los Muertos fellow wearing a skull mask and a hat — I cannot wait to crochet a BRAIN and an embroidered SKULL MASK!! 😂😍😂😍

entry for letter N – absolutely nothing comes to mind with N! 😱 perhaps niente (nothing) is the word I should feature..

entry for letter O – occhi (eyes)

entry for letter P – principesse (princesses) there were a lot of those in OUAT, pino (pine tree), pisello (pea) which in Italian is another word for the male counterpart to passera (!!) – and if you think this couldn’t get any weirder and less appropriate for a bedtime story, picture this: the title “The Princess and the Pea” in Italian is literally “The Princess on the Pea” (La Principessa sul Pisello) ..I mean!! Who would approve these titles nowadays?! 😂😂😂😂😂😂

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That’s all for now, people! Thank you for sticking around during these long hiatuses, I’m sorry I don’t have time to write more here. Stay tuned for part 2 of the Halloween extravaganza when Jo’s posts go live and make sure to hop over the other blogs, they always feature so much goodness!

And if you want to stay more up-to-date with the local shenanigans you can follow me on Flickr or Instagram (@thegreytail).

See you soon!

Chiara